A brief commentary on using cheap tactics to win R:TW battles

[Kull]

HANNIBAL: I finally have you where I want you, Publius Cornelius Scipio...Roman conquest of Carthaginian lands ends today, here on the plains of Zama. First we send in the elephants to sow confusion in the ranks, then advance until we engage, all the while flanking with our Numidian cavalry. The day will soon be ours!
SOLDIER: Uh...beg pardon, sir, but about that... The Numidians can't flank them.
HANNIBAL: Whyever not?
SOLDIER: It seems the Romans have backed up against the red line, sir.
HANNIBAL: The-- the what now?
SOLDIER: That glowing red line over there, sir, it's like some kind of-- I can't explain it, but you can't get cross it unless you're running in terror.
HANNIBAL: I don't understand.
SOLDIER: See, sir, they have their forces arrayed over there, in the corner where the red line turns at a right angle.
HANNIBAL: You're saying they have no flank whatsoever, because the RED LINE won't let us get around them?
SOLDIER: Correct, sir.
HANNIBAL: ...Bugger me. Charge straight at 'em, I guess.

[abou]

[Simmons]

HANNIBAL: ...Bugger me. Charge straight at 'em, I guess.

[Birka Viking]

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

and

[NeoSpartan]

now that ain't right

[Zalmoxis]

I lol'd.

[Kushan]

LOL

Wow, aint that the truth...damn red line.

Kushan

[Kugutsu]

Can you make it go away? After all, the land is there beyond it... Imagine, limitless battlefields!
Seriously though, is it possible to at least make the battle area much larger, so it would be impossible to move a whole army from the starting area to the edge before the enemy catches up with you.

[Conqueror]

This is why I hate it when I'm defending and get a bowl-shaped battle map, where all the high ground is concentrated on the edges and especially the corners. Makes unit deployment really tricky

[iberus_generalis]

sadly i got two words for you.... Hardcoded limits....=( i would like to have limitless battlefield... the strategy depth it would add... the ambushs i could set.... the pursuits i could do....

[MSB]

But seriously: I do that all the time.

[Justiciar]

True story.

[NeoSpartan]

But seriously: I do that all the time.

hey come on man.... thats cheating.....

[Birka Viking]

Why play strategic games when u cheat??? And why play at all when u cheat???

[MSB]

hey come on man.... thats cheating.....

Well it helps me win: One unit of elite African Pikemen vs. Twelve units of Triarii. Without red line I die. With I win!

[Kralizec]

very funny

Why play strategic games when u cheat??? And why play at all when u cheat???

It's SP, so there's no thing such as "cheating". If there is, then the AI is certainly cheating as well when a neutral AI parks multiple stacks over half your land without any way to tell them to get off. I lost a couple of cities once that way when they decided to attack. The AI also stacks phalanxes, but very rarely.

Many people see retraining experienced units as a cheat. I somewhat agree, I don't retrain army units but I do retrain naval units. Naval battles are always auto-calced, and hard or very hard campaign difficult settings can lead to ridiculous results in the AI's favour. In this case I think my "cheating" is compensating for a flaw in the game.

[NeoSpartan]

Why play strategic games when u cheat??? And why play at all when u cheat???

Priceless...........

I don't quite agree re-trainning expireinced units as a cheat, because when you retrain them the Expirience level Goes DOWN. Thus making up for the rookies in the unit.

[Kralizec]

I don't quite agree re-trainning expireinced units as a cheat, because when you retrain them the Expirience level Goes DOWN. Thus making up for the rookies in the unit.

The underlined part was true for MTW, but not in RTW. That's why it's considered a cheat by many.

CA apparently did consider the issue, because retraining costs more if the remaining men are experienced. This is a rather bad solution IMO, all the more because the increased cost really doesn't weigh up to the benefit of getting a full size experienced unit

[iberus_generalis]

why is retraining units a cheat??? how can it be? it's realistical to retrain unit...or at least feel in the gaps with replacing soldiers....in war this often happens... and economically it's cheaper to retrain units than create new ones...besides that, by retraining a unit you make it also cheaper cuz you only pay upkeep for that unit, whereas you should pay for the upkeep of the new unit plus the one of the older spent unit.... i think that retraining units is realisitical, cuz the roman empire only had a set number of units, and didn't just create new ones out of the blue cuz they needed to fill in the gaps of the old ones... and no matter how veteran a unit is, it will always get casualties...one battle no problem, but after two or three these veteran units may not be battle worthy and thus need to be filled in...to me it's quite realistical, as in the classic era, and pre empire roman, the rookies were trained by their colleges of the unit, and thus these rookies would pretty usually acquire a level almost as high as their veteran colleges.... i think this system is way more realistical than the MTW one...as a veteran unit would loose much of its experience at times... and in reality that shouldn't happen in such an amplitude as in MTW....

BTW if there is something that is unrealistical about the unit retraining is the lack of ability to recycle pre polibian and pre marian units into post polibian and post marian units... because this way gold chevron units are lost really easily... wich is really lame IMHO...

[edyzmedieval]

I loled.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

They are totally different units IG. We can't make them be absorbed by the new type.

[iberus_generalis]

it's said though... i would love to convert the units and not loose the chevrons...

[Kralizec]

It would also be awesome if certain units could be converted into other units, to reflect their better experience.

Think about hastati. After reaching a certain age and after gathering enough spoils of war to afford better equipment, they'd continue their service as principes and later as triarii. The trigger would be the overall amount of experience of the unit.
Or Karthadast's lybian spearmen, after attaining a crushing victory over the Romans, would attain better armour due to loot.

For a game developper that would be tricky to represent, though

[CountArach]

Ahh, can anyone ever get sick of RTW humour? Probably.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Concerning retraining, I usually train a new unit and then send him alone to the army that is 'damaged', then dump him into all the damaged units and disband the left overs. Doing it this way, the guys will lose experience when they get new guys (average of the two combined groups) and this is nearly a must with AOR implimenting mods.

P.S. I could have sworn that units lost experience when you retrained them, way back when I started playing RTW...

[NeoSpartan]

[QUOTE=Kralizec]The underlined part was true for MTW, but not in RTW. That's why it's considered a cheat by many.

....QUOTE]

really????

I'll pay more attention next time. I think the chevrons go down. I have a unit of cavalry with 3 men/horses with 2 gold chevrons. I'll what happens.

[Kull]

"Corner Camping" is pretty bad, and I've only done it a few times when seriously outnumbered. The very last time was two full stacks against my half stack. Somehow I messed up when anticipating the arrival points of the enemy armies, because immediately after hitting the "start" button, a mass of enemy Mada Asabara appeared directly behind me and raced downhill into the rear of my spearmen. Gah. Total annihilation and lots of "running in terror".

Got exactly what I deserved and haven't done it since.

[The_Mark]

Not that the AI would care of the thin red line anyway. I once cornered a horse archer unit with three pantodapoi phalangitai into the corner of the map taking me half an hour. And what do the buggers do? They calmly cross the red line and walk around my encircling spearmen and re-cross the boundary just behind my spears.

Gah.

[iberus_generalis]

it happens to me so many times.... they can cross the red line, but i can't.... even when im outnumbered and cornered against the red line they somehow can cross it and recoross, and atempt a flank.... i notice this happens more often in VH....